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Sen. John McCain knocked down a suggestion by Vice President Joe Biden that Sen. Ted Kennedy’s death could be a ...

... “catalyst” for getting health care reform this year.

“It might, but you’d have to change the way that things have been done and that is the fact that there’s been no real negotiations,” McCain said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show.

McCain said negotiations for a bill have so far been partisan, “done by Democrats.”

“That’s not the kind of negotiations that I did with Sen. Kennedy on a number of issues,” he said.

Moments before McCain appeared on “Today,” Biden said in a taped interview that Kennedy’s loss might “be the catalyst to make people come around and begin to compromise to get something really important done.”

The Arizona senator said he is “more than willing” to work across the aisle on health care.

“I’m more than happy to,” McCain said. “There’s been no opportunity to do so.”